Story:The End of Eternity/E18
XVIII The absolute final Key standing in front of Arend and Klaytaza was Arend Vitalis himself. He was the same height as Arend, had the same medium brown skin tone Arend and almost everyone on the planet shared, the same posture, the same facial structure, the same downward-facing lips, the same thin fingers, and the same detached, weary glare. The only thing different about this antagonistic vision of Arend was purely cosmetic: he wore a black Key bodysuit sans armor, had long white hair, his face bore dark black tear marks that originated from bags beneath his eyes, and the irises in his eyes were bright orange – the same shade as Klaytaza’s. “This cannot be,” Arend stated. “It’s… It’s me. But that’s impossible. How could I…?” “I am you, Arend Vitalis,” the reflection stated. “But you are not I. Your entire being is within my existence, but my existence is more than what you are now. Refer to me as Bestim Shicksal, if you wish to simplify things. You have finally arrived to the stage of your destiny… of our destiny. I cannot lie – you have done well to make it this far.” Try as he might, Arend felt only confusion in his heart. No more anger, no more ruined or misguided passion, no more rushing to see the end. Only confusion, and a vague sense at that. “This makes no sense,” he mumbled. “None of this makes any sense. But I feel as if it is only the end… There is no longer any urgency in my breast… It’s almost like I just don’t care anymore. How could that be…?” He looked at himself with sad eyes and pain in his expression, and it was mirrored back to him. Bestim Shicksal spoke to him in response. “It isn’t often that you make it this far. But you never advance from here.” Klaytaza raised her weapon. The being known as Bestim looked to her and raised his hand. With this action, a quiet shifting and grinding of metal could be heard, and Arend realized that there was a semicircle made of metal embedded within Bestim’s chest where his heart would be. Attached to this small object were two long golden chains shackled to matching bracelets around his wrists. “Hold,” Bestim commanded. “We have much to discuss before your final battle is to take place.” “Yes, Master,” Klaytaza stated emotionlessly as she lowered her weapon. Arend turned and looked at Klaytaza with reddening eyes. “What are you doing?! How dare you listen to him? I thought… I thought you loved me?!” Klaytaza looked to him, and Arend could see the brightness behind her eyes. “I do,” she replied simply. Once again, Arend believed her. “She loves us,” Bestim interjected. “Because we are one and the same. Just as the night is the same as the day – as the stars are the same as the blazing suns – as the mind is the same as the body – as the repentance is the same as the redemption – as the anonymity is the same as the identified. A link disconnected from the chain creates its own chain, and a clock broken is correct indefinitely.” Arend looked to Bestim with a hurt and lost expression. “Who are you? What is going on here? How could any of this have happened?” “Your mistake is in believing that any of this did happen. The Thousand Eternal Ritual did not happen. Your victories did not happen. Your love did not happen. None of us happened. We are all specks of dust blinking with light and fading into darkness to the universe, not important in the slightest no matter how brightly we attempt to burn in our fading existence. We do not exist. We never did.” “Stop lying to me, or I will grow angered and smite you!” Bestim chuckled. “Then believe that it did happen. Believe that the world really has not collapsed in on itself yet, and your consciousness does not just further its fantasy. Regardless, everything happens because the Creator forces forward the gears of time ever onward.” “I will smite you!” “No, you will not. You will not grow angry. You have lost the ability to do so. By defying human nature and the nonexistence of us ephemeral beings, you have given up that very human nature that you despise. How could you defeat me when I am yourself? Would you erase the very existence you fought so hard to prove is real?” The two men of equal height looked in each other’s eyes and saw only each other, but in each other they saw themselves. Arend could see the truth – but he refused to believe it. “This is an illusion,” he growled. “You’re just a Key manipulated by a Master to fool me into your ruse before attempting to defeat me. I will not be stopped. There will be no salvation.” “You’re half right. I am a Key and a Master. I have created and destroyed, as was His will. There is no salvation. That which is real is an illusion.” “He does not exist.” “How blind this one is! Out of all our incarnations, you are perhaps the most spirited,” Bestim stated with a dark chuckle. “These eyes have seen all. Yes… even Him. Myself most of all, but especially Him.” Bestim’s smile faded. “He will never let me forget what he looks like, or how his wrath feels. You believe He does not exist, and that all of this is a lie, but I ask you a simple question that took me eons to think of: How could He not exist, but all of this does? All of this chaos? All of this destruction? All of humanity’s faults and sins? All of the Keys who battle to save the human race? All of the humans who continually defy their grand hopes? All of the creation and subsequent destruction? How could we exist without a Creator? How could you deny His existence but argue for your own?” Arend answered in stride without missing a beat. However, for the first time in his life, he did not argue his beliefs with passion, nor with self-righteousness. Rather, his voice was a bored monotone, as if he were reading the works of some other person. "We perceive our own lives, and we breathe our own air. All of reality is something created by one another, and all are linked in our self-consciousness. In order to exist, one must simply wish to create. It is the power of human will, not of overlord omnipotence. That is why I must end all existence and time, because when nothing persists, there can be nothing to create. All originated from nothing and all will end in nothing.” “Void, then, is the ambrosia of your mind?” Arend simply looked Bestim in the eye with narrowed eyes and put his hands in his pockets before speaking. “I answered your question. Now answer mine. How could you be myself? Assuming you really aren’t an illusion, how could I be both a Key and a Master? How could I stand before myself in antagonism rather than agreeing with my own ideals?” Bestim sighed and stepped backwards. Suddenly jutting from the cold steel of the platform below them was a short pillar of silver rock, just tall and wide enough for him to rest upon. He sat on the ephemeral pedestal, one leg raised and one leg hanging from the edge, and looked down upon both Arend and Klaytaza with eyes shining bright orange. “Ask yourself – how is it that the collective Keys to Eternity against you knew exactly when and where you would appear with Klaytaza? How is it that we knew when to start the Thousand Eternal Ritual so that you would not successfully interfere? How is it that Klaytaza knew where to go in this gigantic world to find you, the Master she had been looking for? How is it that Natalia was in the very city that you would appear in when your contract was made? How is it that we knew to send out a Master that would prove to be cannon fodder, but useful enough to keep you trapped whilst the Ritual continued? How is it that I knew you absolutely would not succeed? “It is because all of this has happened before, Arend. Every last second of it. I have seen it occur countless times. You think this is the first time the world has ended and been recreated? You think this is the first time the human race Collapsed and destroyed the planet, and eventually eradicated themselves? “All of time is circular. All of eternity exists at once, passing and remembering, slipping by forwards and backwards. I am you. The very first you. I was the only one who succeeded in stopping the Ritual, and I was the only one who got the meet the Creator himself. Do you know why I say you cannot win? It is because I saw His power firsthand. It is only the limits of human logic that attaches a gender to the Creator, but truthfully, he transcends all sexuality and appearance. He transcends all description. He consists solely of power, benevolence, sadness, anger, jealousy – he is where humanity gains its capricious wiles. The only difference between Us and Him is that he has wisdom, and thus can eke out love for all creation and see the hope in it. “But if one can love, one can hate. And he hates me. He hates us. “I succeeded. I cleft space, reality, and existence in two with my nihilism and Klaytaza’s power. I saw him in the end, and even when the arrival of his power deactivated Klaytaza and disintegrated my mortal body, he held onto my soul. To defy the Creator is an everyday action all humans commit, but to spit in the face of his eternal grace is a sin unforgivable. So he made me that which I wanted the least… eternal. “There is nothing eternal but the human soul. In fighting for nothingness, he made me everything. By merging my soul and consciousness with the first Klaytaza, he gave me the power, vessel, and immortality of a Key to Eternity, but I had become more than just the Key. I am the Master and the Servant. I am the Self and the Mind. I am the Divine and the Pious. I am Death and Life-In-Death. I am the Key to Eternity transcended. I am Eternity. We are Eternity. “Above this platform is the Ark, and when it disappears, the Gates of Paradise open and the Creator descends. All of his creation crumbles, only to be welcomed and rebuilt. There is nothing I can do to stop that anymore. There is nobody who can understand my pain or my suffering. The promised land is our forbidden land. Every time the Thousand Eternal Ritual ends and creation begins to collapse, Arend Vitalis arrives to halt it, and Bestim Shicksal rises in his place. We ascend no more than the moon can create its own life and light. Every time the Thousand Eternal Ritual ends and creation begins to collapse, Arend Vitalis is defeated and ceases to exist, and Bestim Shicksal gains another lifetime of memories, hopelessness, ruination, and lost ambition. Then, when the world is rebuilt, all the Keys are created anew, and I awaken once again. Klaytaza stays active while the rest of us lie dormant, and in the end, I defeat her and take her consciousness, as I must do. She does not lose her pain; I simply take it up anew, and we both suffer. “We are forever shackled in our existence as infinity. To truly end the ritual and refuse humanity its salvation, one must stop the effects of the Ritual by stopping time itself… But you can never do that, because I – We – are time itself. When you decided to prove that you existed, you ended all chances you ever had for victory. There will always be one Key to Eternity remaining, to become Eternity. Time without end can never end. “Now,” Bestim concluded with a sad look on his stone face and a toss of his long white hair, “Look in my eyes, and match my despair.” It took Arend a long time to respond to Bestim’s invitation to defeat. He looked everywhere but in Bestim’s eyes, and thought long and hard of that which was revealed to him. The Ark continued to fall ever closer, and Klaytaza continued to look upon the two with her sad eyes. Klaytaza. She pulled Arend’s gaze, and the two looked at each other. He remembered everything they had been through together, even before they had met in this life. He remembered their kiss, and finally knew why it felt nostalgic, because he had experienced it before. Love for her was not a new discovery, but something built into his very bones. She knew what he wanted. Klaytaza stepped towards Arend, her perfectly crafted hips moving with each step as they always did, and lowered her blade. She stepped to Arend and the two kissed, once in the bed of rebellion and now in the platform of conformity. Arend gained the same feeling of nostalgia and melancholia through their kiss, but as their lips parted and he looked into her eyes, Arend confirmed what she needed in her heart. He knew what he had to do. His own fate was sealed, but hers was still in his hands. Klaytaza would find happiness, even if he never could. That was the promise he made with his lips, and both of their souls. Arend chuckled and a knowing smile traveled along his harsh face as he turned towards Bestim, but not in his eyes. “No matter how I look at it, I can’t give up. Not after I’ve come so far. All this time, I screamed about having no emotions and defying humanity, but I was propelled by jealousy and fear and isolation this entire time… And then I met Klaytaza, and I began to fight for love. Love for what, besides her? I cannot say. But now… I’m not even confused anymore. It’s like… I only feel nothing. It’s what I’ve been looking for all this time, but I can’t even comment on how it feels to reach the end. I just know that this is my end.” The final Key and Master nodded with sagacity. “That is how eternity feels. We have become anonymous. We are seraphs of nothingness. I ask you again to look in my eyes and revel in our despair.” “You say that you know everything about me. So do you know why I came here? Why I started this in the first place, and what I said I would do?” Arend finally looked in Bestim’s golden eyes, but this was not an action that was wallowing in dark despair. On the contrary, he seemed to be melting with fiery defiance. Bestim was taken aback, and hesitated to answer. “Of course. You wanted to see how the world ends. Then you received power, and you wanted to end the world and all redemption yourself. And in your heart you wished to reach eternity with Klaytaza.” “You’re mostly correct,” Arend stated. “but not entirely. I wanted Klaytaza’s love, to be sure – but I know she does not really love me. She is incapable of doing so… She’s just an android, after all. That’s why I promised to her that I would end it – all of it. Everything. Even if I become nothingness, I will not allow the world to be recreated anew. I will not allow her to live through history again!” Bestim stepped down from his seat and looked at Arend with wide eyes. “Even knowing that she will betray you and has no choice but to listen to the Creator, and even knowing that you will become the very objects you fought against, and even knowing you face eternal purgatory within your own mind, you would continue to fight? You would continue to resist?” “You should already know that I would choose to do so,” Arend retorted. “We are one and the same.” “Yes… You are correct. I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but I knew it would.” Bestim raised his arms in the sign of the cross, and in both hands manifested long weapons identical to those Arend and Klaytaza wielded. In response, both of them raised their blades to the man as well. Klaytaza did not waste a second before bursting forward, her sword flashing as she swung it wildly around her. Meeting Bestim head-on, she slashed haphazardly, but each flick of her thin wrist had the potential to cleave Bestim in two. The man who held all Eternity within his breast was not one to be trifled with, however, and he easily blocked her slashes with both blades as if it was child’s play. As the two battled, the final skin of the massive man on the cross began to erode; all that was left was the skin around his cranium, the Ark. The long silver hair on his head had long since began to fall out, leaving his scalp bare, and the fine white hairs fell upon the platform like quiet snow in a restless storm. Where the skeleton of the colossal man was hanging from the otherworldly cross hung, light radiated and brightened the dark clouds above all. “I have fought this battle countless times and won countless times,” Bestim said without any inflection. “I am the immortal emperor of this ephemeral kingdom, anonymous and imaginary, and you cannot hope to defeat me.” Light glared off his blades for but an instant as he attacked Klaytaza for the first time, and what appeared to be a casual wave of his blades was enough to send her flying through the air and crashing to the ground. With Klaytaza thoroughly defeated in such a short time, Bestim looked towards Arend and began to step forward with his arms once again raised. “I have all the power of Eternity. You would do well to remember that, I.” “I am more immortal than you, because I see the pointlessness in it all,” Arend contested. “I made a promise to her. I swore I would end her suffering.” “As if I haven’t done that, as well? As if we haven’t failed, countless times before?” Bestim’s hair, white and silver and reflecting in the void of the platform, drifted behind him as he took another step closer. “Your confidence and your existence is steeped in critical human egotism. Attack me, and you will fail. Let me kill you, and you will fail. You will fail.” Arend did not let these words deter him. Not this time. Speaking without any hesitation or urgency, he reached out to Klaytaza’s crumbled form with one hand and pointed his blade towards the oncoming Bestim with another. “Halt, time!” Time stopped. The gigantic man’s skull continued to be exposed, and light continued to radiate. The colors of existence bled slightly, as they always did when Klaytaza halted time, and cracks appeared over all that Arend could see. Bestim paused, frozen in time as he was, and Arend began to walk towards him, blade raised high. As he did so, Klaytaza began to pick herself up from the ground and start racing towards the two. “It is arrogance to believe that one can resist me,” Arend stated with a neutral gaze. “Even myself.” He arrived before Bestim within three seconds, and stabbed his weightless blade right through the metal semicircle over the man’s heart, shattering its hold on the chains and impaling him through the vital organ. “Three,” Bestim stated with a smile. “It is the peak of human arrogance to believe that even I can defy eternity.” Arend could do nothing but stare at the man who defied Klaytaza’s powers and his own will. He could do nothing but keep his blade impaled into his chest and watch Bestim’s arms raise higher than ever before now that the chains attached to his wrists loosely hung down, unrestrained and uncontrolled. Klaytaza did not arrive in time to stop Bestim from raising his arms into the sign of the cross once again, and was ultimately unable to stop him from enacting his final act. Time began to flow once again. “…What have I done?” Arend wondered. He had known as soon as he plunged the blade into his foe that his victory was only a loss and a curse in disguise. He had known as soon as Bestim spoke the third time, denouncing their pausing of time for the third time, that he had only summoned that which would end him. He had known that Bestim was right, and that he had lost. “You have fulfilled the prophecy which you sought to end. You have recreated the world which you sought to destroy. I am pausing time myself, much as Klaytaza did, but only for you and I. I am erasing all of time, compressing it, and making it one. When I am finished and my last breath leaves my lips, you will become I, and I will become I. With the blade of the Key, you have unlocked Eternity.” As he raised his arms and smiled, Bestim looked at Arend with the same sad despair he had always shown within his eyes. He looked joyful with his actions, but it was clear that pursuing them, and existing in general, was the most painfully sublime feeling he could ever experience. The world around the three began to slowly lose its color, and Arend looked to Klaytaza as she finally arrived at the scene. Her body moved with a startling combination of slow motion and sped up jerkiness, with a step here slow and a blin there rapid. She looked at the two of them in turn, her eyes looking from Bestim to Arend as she searched for her real Master between the two of them. Arend looked to Klaytaza with sadness, full of the despair that Bestim so lovingly boasted. “I’m sorry. I’ve failed you. I’ve failed them all… but especially you. I promise you that I will not end here. I will find your end, and I will bring it, even if it takes me millions of years to summon the power necessary. My love for you will never fade.” But even as he spoke, Arend could feel nothing in his heart. His love had already faded, bleeding into nothingness just like the components of all reality around him. The end had come. He had cast himself aside, and having become fallen, he lost all feeling and all love. He was separated, disconnected, lost, and anonymous, now more than ever. The world around the two twisted and morphed into a discomforting blend of nothingness, flesh mixing with metal and air becoming fire and ice, but Klaytaza persisted. Arend stared at her, forcing her to stay alive in his perception for just a moment longer, giving her a form to be in when the forms of every other object ever created collapsed and melded together. Klaytaza gazed into Arend’s eyes and into his soul, and for the first time in four billion years, she smiled with pure content and satisfaction. She had realized at the last moment that he was her Master, at least for now. His identity had not yet faded. Her eyes sparkled with the lights of the stars, and she said to Arend with complete sincerity: “I have been waiting so long to meet you, Master. Life is but a blink of the eye when I know that I will meet you once again.” “I will not forget you! Say it once more,” Arend pleaded. “Say it once more, please!” His chest was saturated with pain and disappointment and he struggled to breathe. His voice came out of his pocket of complete time compression with difficulty, but Klaytaza heard him and smiled. “I love you, my Master.” She lied to him one final time, more to ease his heart than her own. Arend cried out as his personal sense of time was erased. Both he and Bestim became detached from reality – removed from time and its hold – set free from the shackles of linearity and causality. All around the two, the clouds faded to reveal uniform darkness and stars. Water pooled around their feet and all around the platform, slowly dripping off the sides into oblivion, and the uniform silver hair threads that had fallen around the platform began to drift away in the current of holy elixir. Klaytaza disappeared as time compressed for the final two men alive, and the stars continued to lighten up the brightness of nonexistence. All around them, time and space began to compress, and events of the past and future flew by their eyes until they, too, melded with the stars and became darkness. He wanted to cry. Arend wanted to cry, and scream, and mourn the woman he called his, but could not. His heart did not exist, and he felt no more pain at her disappearance. There was no more humanity left within him to mourn her with. He wanted there to be sorrow, agony, remorse, but there was only emptiness. Arend’s clothes slowly withered away and disappeared just as his humanity did, and his skin slowly blackened until all except his face and neck were overtaken and painted in complete darkness. His hair, wizened and affected by the instantaneous passing of eons, grew and elongated until it carelessly passed over his back and shoulders. His body did not age or wrinkle in the slightest. All he could do was watch as time passed away from him, forever going quickly and fading away. All he could do was repent as all of creation flew past him, no longer vulnerable to his touch or his will. All he could do was weep permanent tears of darkness as Klaytaza finally faded away into dust. The tears were all he had, and he could not even shed them with sincere sorrow. He could not cry for her, not truly, but he would remember her. He would never allow himself to forget her, or his humanity. A single drop of blood fell from Bestim’s lips as he looked at Arend, who now looked exactly like him. “I sacrifice my body to use these powers and bring you to my level of divine strength. When I die, my powers of complete time erasure and compression will end, and in front of you will be the Creator.” All around the two, the platform faded away into void, as did the clock tower and all of time. Around them was vague creation, unrestrained and untapped, personified by barren wasteland in every direction. “When time resumes anew, you will have gained my body and my soul. Our memories will become one and you will remember all. My consciousness will join those of all humanity. I will reunite with Natalia and Klaytaza and Avdotya and the Siblings and All. We will await you, but you will be alone for billions of years. You will forever be alone.” “I remember her…” Arend’s eyes were dead and his arms outstretched in the sign of the cross. He could only see Klaytaza, only feel her slight curves and taste her life-touched lips. “I will not forget her…” Dimensions of sight began to distort around the two as even reality was erased. What was and what was not became unclear as ripples and dips protruded into the mundane and linear. “When you are alone,” Bestim continued, “You will have gained the power of all the Keys and myself, but you must know that it will never be enough. You can never erase the Creator, nor the collective will of humanity. You are separated now, isolated within yourself and the shackles of time forevermore.” “I will not forget…” Bestim’s skin began to lose color and his eyes began to lose their luster. His life was quickly fading away, as was his physical body. Finally, before he gave up and let loose a sigh of death, he looked Arend in the eye and smiled a grin unlike any he had shown before. “When you have been alone forevermore, you will realize that you can only ever erase yourself. Never forget what time can do.” Arend understood then what he had been struggling to come across for all of time before. It clicked and he understood what Bestim had struggled with for eons, what the answer to the question of immortality meant, and what sacrifice had to be made in order to attain true human freedom. Bestim faded, and Arend was by himself in the stars. There was no more need to speak. He would not forget. Power and knowledge of all the ages was within his body, crafting bones made of agony and muscles of sorrow but a heart without emotion. The power of time was in him, and he knew what to use it for. The massive man had vanished, and the cross he was on had disintegrated. The platform had ceased to exist, as had the tower, as had the world. All that was left around Arend was an empty heart and a giant metallic circle in the air in front of him. Arend Vitalis, now known as Bestim Shicksal and as Eternity Shackled, stood floating in nothingness with both hands raised in the sign of the cross and two double-sided longswords in his hands. The circle began to crack and open. The Ark began to open, and the final man in existence felt his body crumbling away from the sheer power moving to be let free. “I remember everything… She’s waited all this time, and the answer was right in front of me. It was within me.” His body was ruined, but his soul lived on. Her curse would end, but he would live on. He smiled, because he understood. “I need you,” he said to the nothingness. “But you deserve to be free.” Before the Ark could open and before the Creator could finish everything, before Eternity’s form could disappear into dust, the final being turned his blades on himself and thrust them through his heart. “Final,” he cried out into everything that once was, and as he commanded, Eternity ended. KEYS TO ETERNITY REMAINING: 0